Behind the Bitmask Page 18

  “I hear that you can’t get good Thai food down here. Not yet, anyways.” Azure then pierced me with another interrogating gaze. “What kind of movies do you like?”

  “I don’t know. Good ones?” Azure giggled at this.

  “You’re well covered at the theater. I’ll gladly pick something out for you.”

  Azure chose a “family friendly” cartoon film. We nominally watched it, but I found myself looking at her than was probably polite. I guess the movie was decent; the theater was at least half full, and the audience (mostly human, some chthons, and a few daemons working concessions) seemed to find it entertaining enough. A movie theater full of concessions and seating sure beat being on the run, and a city under the protection of a possibly benevolent titan could easily be the staging point for a newfound assault on Sigmar. Eventually, the movie ended, and as we filed out into the streets of Agnus’s realm, Azure pushed a scrap of paper into my hand.

  “Call me some time,” she said, before vanishing as if into thin air. Then, I heard a crash to my side and saw her dashing away. She’d just knocked over some lesser daemon’s food cart, and both the cart and its operator were blasting my ears with harsh static.

  My experience with Aux had led me to expect a phone number, but Azure’s paper instead had a crude drawing of a cartoon cat on it. Luckily, it also had a phone “signature”, which I could feed into my laptop to figure out some way of reestablishing communications. I was seriously considering it – most titans were comprehensibly dangerous (or at least confoundingly harmless, going by the example Agnus set), but Azure was also intriguing. I was beginning to appreciate the way her long black hair flashed blue when she was excited. I’ve never felt this way about a titan before!

  After that movie, I made my way back to Agnus’s throne room. He was pacing maniacally and would occasionally stop to either straighten one of his paintings or deliberately make them crooked.

  “Oh, right! The job. You probably still want that, right?” he said when he noticed me.

  “It seems like a good idea to take it,” I responded. “When can I get started?”

  “Come here tomorrow. I’ll get you set up.”

  And that’s how I became Agnus’s chief of information security. It wasn’t entirely clear what that meant, and I’d lost a nice pantsuit in the process. I hoped I could make something of the position, because otherwise it’d be a porphyric, blood-hemorrhaging cherry on a shit sundae of a life gone wrong. I was beginning to realize that serving a “Lord of Vice” could very well amplify my own hedonistic, self-centered territories if I wasn’t careful. Maybe if I could rid myself of my own vices, I’d be able to hold out, and Agnus would let my self-improvement be so long as I kept his town safe. Maybe there was a way to enchant these tendencies out of myself? Probably too dangerous.

  My mind wandered after a while. I could not escape that Agnus was offering me actual cash (US dollars, woo!) and a chance to stabilize my finances once I’d settled up my debts. Once my first paycheck came in, I could visit the local Armani boutique and start adding new outfits to my collection.

  Then, I realized that was exactly the sort of frivolity I didn’t need in my life. A better option, I realized, would be to invest in fighting skills. There was a gun shop not too far from my apartment, and there were probably folks offering martial arts lessons, as well. I also had a long term goal of penetrating the depths of magic and computer science; I’d need to keep my studies going. All I knew at this point was that I was going to be very, very busy.

  After a few days of acclimating to my work for Agnus (who, despite very possibly being at war with the concepts of dignity and hygiene, was shaping up to be a very understanding and straight up intelligent boss), I remembered that I still had Azure’s phone signature, and that she was probably hoping I’d call her back. So I did. I scanned the signature onto my laptop and got an IP address and port number. I tried putting it into my web page; as far as I can tell, the connection went through, but it wasn’t transferring any pages. Then, words appeared in my browser tab.

  “I was hoping you’d follow up with me, Charlotte!”

  This is exactly what the page looked like, down to the font. This probably wasn’t even valid HTML!

  She abruptly appeared on the bed next to me with a brief sting of swirling piano and strings. I nearly hit the ceiling. I certainly didn’t have the time to see if Azure had properly set up her document.

  “Why didn’t you use the door?” I asked her, once I’d recovered.

  “I didn’t need to. You would’ve let me in either way, as far as I know,” she explained, which didn’t really make me feel better after her home invasion. But she was here, and I wasn’t really in the mood to kick her out. Then I noticed her choices in fashion.

  “Holy shit, that’s straight out of DeviantART!” Today, Azure had wings – gigantic, feathered, angelic-looking wings. They were slowly rising and falling as if they wanted to break free of their titan back prison, but it was futile, since they were fused to her dress. Without the wings, the dark gray fabric, knee length and relaxed but close cut, would be appropriate for a more casual workplace (in other words, not my old accounting firm), a library, or some other place a demure girl like myself wouldn’t mind going on the weekend. Giving yourself wings, though, is an incredibly bold fashion statement; that, at least, seemed pretty fitting for what I knew of Azure. I couldn’t place what sort of perfume Azure was wearing beyond that it was floral, but it was already beginning to wreak havoc on my brain.

  “What have you been up to lately?” Azure asked as she crossed her legs.

  “I’ve just been getting used to my new job. I like how it pays an actual salary,” I responded.

  “Neat. I’ve been thinking about introducing human currency in my own places of power. Hard to convince some of the old hardliners that it’s worth it, though.”

  “Agnus made me his chief of information security. I split my time between monitoring the security system, dragnetting fugitives, and automating all the important work. He seems to like the scripts I’ve written so far,” I elaborated, even though I had no idea if Azure actually cared about the details. Whether or not that was the case, she smiled again and leaned back for a moment.

  “You know what they say about automation...they say ‘don’t automate yourself out of a job,’ or something along those lines.” I guess she wasn’t particularly interested, and was just trying to make small talk. I decided to try a different avenue of inquiry.

  “What’s your queendom like?” I asked.

  “Probably not all that different from here. I don’t have as many humans working for me as Agnus does, but I do try to give them good working conditions and a competitive health insurance plan. We have a teleportation machine, but the turnover rate’s still pretty high.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Fast paced human society, if you ask me. People are always looking for new opportunities. I need to research it more, but that’s for another day. I came here to have fun.”

  “What do you do for fun, Azure?” She seized up for a few seconds.

  “I just realized that you might not like what I had in mind,” she said after she’d recovered. “Human women don’t seem to share a lot of my interests.”

  That was an...interesting way of putting it. I think I knew what she was getting at, and officially I didn’t want to be known for engaging in such things lest I have to find another job on Earth. But given all the upheaval in my life as of late, did I really care what other people thought about me?

  “Charlotte, have you ever played Warcraft III? It’s the pinnacle of gaming.”

  Okay, I definitely wasn’t expecting that. I didn’t own a computer with access to Windows, and given Sigmar’s ties, I was never again going to touch a Macintosh. The vast majority of computer gaming therefore went beyond my notice, unless I really wanted to play Freeciv or Tux
Kart or whatever knockoff the open source crowd was trying to promote that month. One of my boyfriends in high school had been obsessed with his Nintendo 64; I’d broken up with him because he blew off a date to play some first person shooter I’ve since forgotten the name of. Azure, though, made some hand gestures and summoned her personal laptop (with the game installed) from another portal – I got a glimpse of a nice office before it closed. She had me play through the tutorial; the game was easy enough to figure out on a basic level, so this didn’t take long.

  “Kind of funny that you came all this way just to play games with me, don’t you think?” I quipped as I commanded a small band of orcs to tear down a human village. Were the local chthons going to turn into orcs as humans (and gamer humans in particular) colonized ever more of hell? Hard question.

  “One of my human minions introduced me to strategy games. Between that and the science fiction, you guys are definitely winning the culture war,” she responded, ignoring the subtext I’d given her. I was having a very hard time keeping it out of anything I said to Azure, especially when I kept getting whiffs of her perfume. Now that I think about it, we were sitting very close together.

  “Besides Agnus, what is the ‘culture’ like here in hell?” I asked.

  “It’s nonexistent. Most of the titans are interested in little more than increasing their own personal power, and the chthons have to go along with it unless they like being killed. That’s changing, but hell is still a land of unending war. How did you manage to avoid getting caught up in any of the territorial struggles during your exile?”

  I really hadn’t given that question much thought, and now was a terrible time to get started.

  “I don’t know,” I finally admitted. “When I jumped through the portal, it must’ve placed me in some crappy part of hell that none of the titans actually want.”

  “Charlotte, there’s no terra nullius in hell. Every inch has been claimed, even if only by some forsaken petty lord or lady. Based on what I know about our people, even the most desolate and sparsely inhabited parts of hell have seen at least one battle.”

  I sighed. Azure was clearly more knowledgeable about this than I was.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “I’m fine; it’s just that I didn’t expect to ever spend a night playing video games and talking geopolitics in the pits of hell, even if this part isn’t exactly the pits.” I made myself laugh, so I had to be doing something right. In fact, now that I think about it, I hadn’t really had a chance to unwind since the night Aux died. If I hadn’t met Azure, I might’ve collapsed from despair or started an extra deep level murder cult or something. I don’t know how, but I would’ve found a way.

  Was I holding her hand? I was! What’s up with that?

  “If there’s anything you want to do, Charlotte, I’m all for it,” Azure said. And then it made sense!

  When I was younger, my mother tried to get me hooked on Greek Orthodoxy. It seems to bring her some measure of comfort to believe that there might be a Heaven to go alongside our very real hell, but trying to rope an eleven year old into it is just irresponsible. I say that knowing that if she’d been shrewd enough to start earlier, I would probably be as devout as she is.

  In fact, it might’ve gone through even then, but a few weeks into my indoctrination, a boy in our congregation named Emile came out as a homosexual. I didn’t really understand it at the time, and I think my mother didn’t really care either way. When the priest found out, though, it apparently drove him to madness. Over the course of a month, churchgoing became increasingly horrific, as his previously forgettable sermons turned to hate speech, and he refused to give communion to ever more of the congregation. On Good Friday, we went to a special service, where he dragged Emile to the altar and performed an “exorcism” that, at least to me, looked like a horrific beating. Luckily, the rest of the congregation took Emile’s side, and the police dragged the priest away in the nick of time. Emile nearly died that day, but he recovered with the prayers of the community and (more importantly) the skillful care of the local hospital. I hear the incident didn’t shake his personal faith, and he’s supposedly become a voice for LGBT rights and acceptance in Minnesota’s Orthodox community. I, on the other hand, fell away from the church. By the time my mother convinced me that the mad priest didn’t represent the views of the entire church, I was up to my nose in college prep and had no time for such petty things as religion and metaphysics.

  That memory had almost overwhelmed me when Azure had propositioned me, and I wondered if she hadn’t gone through a similar experience. It didn’t matter now because I’d decided I wasn’t going to let hatred or fear rule my life, nor was I going to stand by and let it consume anyone close to me. My first step would be to help Azure see that for once, something good could come of our feelings. She gasped slightly as I wrapped my arms around her chest, making sure not to pin the wings, but then she returned the favor by enfolding me in those same wings...her surprisingly warm and fluffy wings – a pity that they’re only part of a costume.

  “Charlotte! You’re not like other girls…you understand me!” she gasped. She had such lively eyes.

  “What? No! We’ve barely been introduced!” I put my hands on her back to make sure she didn’t get the wrong idea. “Look, I’ve been around the block enough to know what wanting to connect with someone feels like.”

  Words were becoming more difficult, especially now that Azure had taken my left hand in her right. I liked where this was going. It felt more intimate than my average one-night stand.

  “I mean, you know what it’s like to be attracted to another woman,” said Azure. She was right. I kissed her on the lips, and from there, let the rest of my body do the talking.

  If the Christians are right about anything, it’s that sexual intercourse can be a powerful expression of the love between two people. They might not be willing to extend that sentiment as far as I did with Azure, but our time together just then probably set back the various sects’ missionary work in hell by a few decades. What, were you expecting a detailed description? Go watch a porno or something.

  I will admit to this, though – when we’d finished up for the night and were cuddling together under the sheets, Azure said something I now find incredibly poignant.

  “If we can be together like this, then maybe there’s hope for our people,” she whispered into my ear. At the time, I dismissed it as generic pillow talk, probably because I was too spent to give it the consideration it deserved. Now, though, I’m certain she’s onto something. Azure hadn’t (and couldn’t) divested me of the urge to destroy Sigmar and get my revenge, but I now realized I had time for other tasks in my life, even if they didn’t directly hasten Sigmar’s death.

  She left the next morning, but not before giving me an actual phone number to contact her. We both had our duties (she had far more, in fact, with a realm of her own to manage), and while it pained me a bit to see her go so soon, I knew that she’d come back for me...at least if she wanted to come, at all.

  My wit and charm were clearly undiminished by the experience.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company and reflection must finish him.” - John Locke

  After a month, I was actually beginning to enjoy my tenure as Agnus’s chief of information security. If it weren’t for the fact that I had a burning vendetta to carry out, I could’ve stayed put for many years. The security apparatus was a surprisingly pleasant place to work – I was getting paid more (in Earth money!) than I’d made as an accountant, and my complexion was improving now that I could afford to get enough sleep without worrying about being impaled by another titan.

  Agnus was also an improvement from my last mundane Earthworld supervisor – Terry’s philosophy seemed to be “Just stay away and hope Charlotte does her job, but fire her if that doesn’t work.” On one hand, I liked
the lack of interference, but things could get dicey if I actually needed to ask him a question. Agnus, though, actually listened to my concerns and recommendations. With that on my side, we were beginning to make some major improvements to how he protected his computers.

  While there’s some overlap between all the highest security positions, the chief of information security in Agnus’s realm has two main responsibilities:

  Make sure that the computer systems in Agnus’s realm are unhackable, or at least prohibitively difficult to break into. This entails not only keeping the software and hardware used in the computers up to date, but also preventing unauthorized access to the systems, whether it be a mischievous script kiddie with a USB flash drive full of malware, or a straightforward invasion of the realm.

  Play “social engineer” with Agnus’s subjects, convincing, coercing, or otherwise manipulating them into obeying the laws of the land and working for the collective betterment of the realm.

  I came into this with little experience in the latter, but it might be my favorite part of the job. It’s kind of like being the minister of propaganda in a theoretically benevolent dictatorship. Agnus still seems to distrust democracy, which isn’t exactly kosher to my Americanized ears. When we meet, he talks a lot about Singapore in between his usual routine of sin and debauchery. It still beats dealing with Sigmar, though – rumors were that he was trying to get his underlings to inform on each other Stasi-style now that assassinating me as an example without properly invading Agnus’s realm was off the table.

  Another thing in this job’s favor was that it kept me distracted from wondering what would happen if I hadn’t exited Sigmar’s service at the time I did. While hunting down and killing Sigmar was still off the table, I figured I could at least outperform him in what few ways I was sure I could. In particular, I made an effort to learn the names and backstories of the local employees, instead of trying to delegate that to my immediate subordinates. The idea was to avoid ending up isolated and out of touch in case I needed to put together a fire team. There weren’t nearly as many people in my department as there’d been in my coven, which helped.